Afternoon Drive withStephen Grootes

In a column published in the Sowetan on Tuesday, EFF leader Julius Malema writes "They killed Biko because he had an idea: that blacks must be proud."

Extending on this thought, Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, EFF national spokesperson, shares his insight on Steve Bantu Biko - his political thought, contemporary relevance and importance.

12 September 2017 marks 40 years since Biko died while in police custody.

Ndlozi explains how the central focus in Biko's writings is on the psychological effects of colonisation on black communities, and the process of self-denigration.

Apartheid created an existence of guilt for black people, we come out of a socialisation that we do not belong where we are, every time we come into the city, walk into spaces.....

— Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, EFF national spokesperson

That is why we have such a destructive relationship even with properties that belong to us,because we are not proud enough to know that we deserve the best.

— Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, EFF national spokesperson

Ndlozi says the foresight in Biko's philosophy finds much more power if we look back over the past 23 years.

We have not been led by proud blacks who have got confidence in black people, we have been consumers, kept in the labor reserves as cheap labor.

— Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, EFF national spokesperson

Here are men and women, they have got the state apparatus, power to make decisions, and they do not transform the living conditions of black people in a way that makes them access a life of dignity.

— Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, EFF national spokesperson

From a black consciousnesses point of view the diagnoses is they lacked the necessary confidence and pride....what Steve is saying is that you have got to have the confidence to run your own institutions, claim them as your own.